Not that I focus on my IRA here, but I just made two trades that I hope will perform well for me. I bought 300 shares of CSCO at 31.40 and 200 shares of EBAY at 36.62. I have mentioned a couple of times that my IRA hasn’t performed as well as my brokerage account. One obvious reason is that I “double down” in my brokerage account and can’t in my IRA. CSCO and EBAY are new buy and hold positions for me. EBAY took a beating after earnings, but I think it’ll recover nicely. CSCO is just back to being a good company again and I want to ride the wave.
Because I can’t cut myself free of my safety blanket completely, I put limit orders on covered calls for both to hit if they rise a few dollars in the next few weeks. I’m sitting and holding if they inch up, but if they rise quickly, I’ll take a profit and look for something new. If my luck works out the way I have planned, my limit orders for the covered calls will hit, I’ll get the premiums and the stock won’t pass the strike and I’ll win on both and do the same thing again the next time around.
Both are down a few cents from where I bought them 15 minutes ago, but the way I’m reading the charts they should find support somewhere near their current prices and could be good moves with the frothy optimism removed. I still have enough cash in my IRA to allow one more stock buy and will then be able to step back from it a little longer while I focus on my taxable brokerage account.
I’m also changing my sentiment to neutral on the home page based on how the market has reacted the past six hours of trading after the jolt on Friday.